Welsh Journals

REMNANTS OF MINING IN CEREDIGION BEFORE THE 19th CENTURY After declining into oblivion from its peak a hundred years ago, the old silver-lead mining industry of Mid-Wales has of late years enjoyed a substantial revival, not in economic terms, but from growing attention from the historian, industrial archaeologist, and the general public. A stimulating and very rewarding occupation is the attempt to locate the actual sites and physical remnants of the earlier mining endeavours, and to establish a correlation with contemporary records. This approach, which in great measure involves forsaking the comforts of the study for the wind and rain of the mountains, has been much neglected in the past. It was however rendered easier some ten years ago by the publication of W. J. Lewis Lead Mining in Wales, with its copious references to documentary sources. Archaeological investigations had already been conducted by Oliver Davies1 and others before the war into Roman or potentially Roman workings, but that period was too remote for any hope of documentary correlation in any detailed degree. Initially, the identification of more than a very few features dating from the 17th or 18th centuries seemed hardly possible in consequence of the many subsequent re-workings, particularly within the last 150 years but visits to the sites soon revealed this was not so. One reason was that the scenes of later workings had frequently moved sufficiently away to leave the older sites more or less undisturbed, and furthermore the bulldozer with its capability for mass destruction at minimal cost was then far in the future. An early period of mining enterprise about which contemporary documentation survives is that of Thomas Bushell, and it is recorded that he drove long levels as deep as possible to drain a number of ancient workings. These included Talybont, Goginan, Cwmerfin, Cwmsymlog and Darren, and on investigation, the extent to which the evidence of his attempts may still be traced is remarkable-only at Talybont has the actual site of the level yet to be determined. At Cwmsymlog, Bushell's level served as the main drainage adit for over 250 years until the mine finally closed in the early part of this century. Its location is plainly marked on the map or plan of Perveth made by Lewis Morris about 1745 during his capacity as Surveyor to the Crown, and Morris also indicated the level driven by Bushell at Darren. At both mines the course of the level is still evident, being revealed at Darren by a long row of grassy humps which conceal the waste from numerous air shafts along its course. The original